A first kiss
by Cee5
Summary: Just as the title says, John and Sherlock's first kiss. Post Season 3.


Their eyes locked and there was a shift in the air. Sherlock had felt it many times before, in different occasions and for different reasons, but this time John felt it too.

He had been all alone. For months. Sherlock had tried to make a breach in the casing but John had driven him away. Too many things had happened. The baby. Mary. The whirlwind in his life, the confusion in his mind, his total lack to deal with loss even though he should know how to do it by now, and his way of driving people away, even Sherlock, because he was the soldier, the always steady, strong, unaffected soldier, the one who would carry on no matter what. He had been a fool.

Sherlock had given him the space he needed, or at least the one he had asked for. He didn't know how to break boundaries, how to impose his presence when others didn't want him. When John didn't want him. He had considered him a lost battle for a long time now.

Sherlock could see everything: the way John's breath came to a halt, expanding his chest against the fabric of his shirt, the way his hand closed in a familiar fist and his jaw clenched. Sherlock's brain gears were moving, fast, unstoppable. John's had frozen, making him unable to react to something he didn't even know how to define.

Seeing John walking into the flat like that after so long was like feeling the arms of an old friend wrapping around his heart, warming him all up.

Sherlock took a step forward. He didn't know what to say. What do people say to friends whose life has become so detached from yours? What do you say to a friend that turns you into everything you always despised about the human condition?

John exhaled.

"I'm so... sorry."

Saying those words seemed to have drained him entirely. And Sherlock reached out. He didn't really think about what he was doing, or how he was doing it. For the first time in his life, he reacted instinctively.

It was strange how John's face fit in between his hands and even stranger, as he leaned forward, how John's own hands reached out for his coat and held on to it like a lifesaver. Their lips crushed into each other and Sherlock felt the hunger consuming him like nothing else had consumed him. Taking part of every cell in his body, giving him the feeling that his mind was floating away. All was dark but vibrant and John was colour and blood pumping and adrenaline and his heart was drumming in his ears, in every muscle, in his temples and the rush felt better than any puzzle had felt.

John clutched hard at Sherlock's clothes and just let himself go. He was far too tired to fight it back, and he did not want to fight back. He wanted to be devoured and stripped of the things he believed about himself, of the person he thought he was.

Sherlock's tongue burned like poison, like a fire melting iron, and the gap was closing, but in a different way, never to what they used to be. Never to what they thought they were.

And then, without warning, Sherlock softened. John felt his fingers running through his hair, the nails scratching slowly at the back of his head, as if he too was searching for something to hold on to. Something that would give him the certainty that John was not just ethereal matter. The famished kiss turned from poison into nectar; it was soothing instead of burning.

Sherlock stopped, lips close to John's, lingering there. He opened his eyes waiting for the storm to come. But when John's eyes find his, he smiled faintly. His left hand left Sherlock's coat, trembling, and found now the outlines of his face. Sherlock shut his eyes, relishing on the way John's hand seemed to be discovering him, as if he was seeing him for the first time.

He opened his eyes. John stood on tiptoes a bit, trying to match his size, and they both smiled. When John leaned over and kissed him, it was quiet and gentle and just as good.

* * *

Sometimes, when he places his head on John's lap and John plays with his hair, or when he brings him coffee in the morning, he smiles, remembering their first kiss. And on very good days, like when they lay on each other arms, after making love all night as a reward for hectic days solving a case, he wonders how he ever thought that a life without this was a better life.


End file.
